Dirty Fracking Business

by Peter Ralph

  ‘Did they tell you that, if details of the agreement ever leaked out, they’d cancel it and your family would get nothing? I promise I won’t print anything. This is off the record.’

  There was a long pause and Steve could hear the dying man breathing, as he fought to take in air. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  ‘Okay, have it your way. I’m sorry we had to meet in such rotten circumstances. You’re a brave man. If there’s anything I can do to help you or your family, don’t hesitate to phone. Good-bye, Jake.’

  There was an even longer pause. ‘Please don’t think that I’m ungrateful. Without Dr George and you, I don’t know where I’d be. I can go peacefully now, knowing that my family will never want for anything. Thanks, Steve, and God bless you.’

  Steve felt sad but relieved. He knew that Filliburton or its insurers must have confidentially settled with Jake Martin, while at the same time frightening the bejesus out of him and his family. It was probably a drip-feed settlement with a lump sum and then annual or monthly payments that they could terminate in the event of a breach. Whatever had been said to frighten them, had worked perfectly.

  CEGL’s share price put on another three percent and Spencer Harbrow basked in the congratulations of his fellow directors. The pressing urgency to remove his three dissident directors had passed and, in his mind, he forgave them for having the sheer audacity to stand up to him; he was confident it would never occur again. He had done what no-one else could have in the circumstances and had fattened their wallets once again. They had become compliant and fawning. Besides, if he retained them, he would have no need to grease Joe Biederman’s greedy palm. Serves him right, he thought. If he’d done what he’d been asked, he’d be twenty-five million dollars richer, but he’d been too cute by half. Biederman might try and cause him trouble, but the ownership of the Margaret Hills tenements was hidden beneath a labyrinth of companies and trusts that would take a lifetime and millions of dollars to unravel.

  Jack Thomas had wanted to convene a meeting of the Fisher Valley Protective Alliance straight after the blockade had been smashed, but then had second thoughts and postponed it. The good folks of the valley had given their all and needed time to lick their wounds and recover, before embarking on another campaign.

  Thirty days after the fateful day when two Labor governments had turned on their own people and supported a foreign-owned gas company, the Paisley Town Hall was again packed. Josh Gibson, who was manning the door, felt an underlying current of anger, but it was different from the last time the Alliance had met. Then it had been aggressive anger but now it was resigned. The estatees had stuck together through thick and thin and had resisted the temptation to put their properties on the market, fearing that once big gas got a foothold, values over the whole estate would fall dramatically. Now their spirit had been broken and two properties in close proximity to Shawn Rosen’s had been offered for sale at rock bottom prices; the slum lord had swooped on them, after chiselling the owners out of a few more dollars.

  Jack Thomas was still as passionate and fiery as ever but, as he stood up to speak, he could sense futility and see defeat on the faces in front of him. He said a few encouraging words and passed the microphone to Dennis Fulton. The Queenslander spoke about the thousands of gas wells on the Spurling Downs and said that he and his followers were still determined to oppose and block big gas from entering any property without the owner’s consent, and that those in the audience should do the same in the Fisher Valley. Someone muttered, ‘And with all your fighting, you’ve still got nearly 4000 wells up there.’

  Billy McGregor wanted to shout his support for the cause, but all he could think of was the seven-year jail term hanging over his head and what he’d heard happened to young males in prison.

  Tom Morgan, Don Carmody and Charles Paxton were rich, powerful and, in normal circumstances, influential but, up against the might of big gas, their power paled into insignificance. They had decided that they would pay the legal fees of those up on serious charges and had briefed senior counsel in Sydney on their behalf. Morgan and Carmody knew that eventually they would have to share their land with big gas and, like the good businessmen they were, they were already thinking of ways they might mitigate the damage and the number of wells.

  Charles Paxton was unshakeable. His hate for those at CEGL who had killed little Charlie and caused Gentle Lady to throw a deformed foal knew no bounds, and he resolved to defend his properties with guns if necessary.

  Father Michael O’Rourke remained silent, having been severely censured by his bishop and warned not to upset large donors to the church.

  The meeting never really gained momentum and, while there were those who would still fight, they would never again see the numbers that had rallied to the cause at Old Farm Road.

  At the back of the hall, Steve Forrest reflected that they had failed because they had been unable to get those in the cities, who were largely unaffected, involved in the cause. In years to come, those blissfully unconcerned city dwellers would question why there were food shortages and why prices were so high, but by then it would be too late to do anything.

  Epilogue

  In 2011 the French Parliament banned the process of hydraulic fracturing. The gas companies claimed the decision was political and not scientific. New Jersey is considering similar legislation.

  In 2012 the federal government introduced a highly-unpopular carbon tax designed, among other things, to force a reduction in the burning of coal to produce energy. CEGL and its competitors ran a huge advertising campaign, branding themselves as highly responsible corporate citizens in support of the tax and, at the same time, promoted ‘clean’ gas. No-one talked about the methane leakage at the well-heads, the methane loss in the compressor stations, the methane loss in the pipelines, the poisons pumped into the earth and the energy used in converting it into a liquid for shipping. The campaign bolstered the erroneous public notion that clean gas was cleaner than coal. It was little wonder that the gas companies supported the tax; there was no way the methane loss could be accurately gauged or taxed and they could pass every cent levied against them on to their domestic customers; they also received export rebates for their international shipments. Better still, their unprofitable solar panels and wind farms, erected for public relations purposes and which would never be capable of producing base load power, became profitable overnight as a result of the higher prices passed onto consumers.

  A District Court judge found Dennis Fulton guilty on all charges. The prosecutor made the judge aware of Dennis’s record and that he had not paid one cent of the thousands of dollars of fines that he’d chalked up over the years. When the Judge asked him if he would like to say anything before she passed sentence, Dennis unleashed a tirade of abuse on the coal seam gas companies and what they were doing to his country. He refused to obey her when she angrily demanded silence and she added contempt of court to the other charges. She said this was one penalty he would pay and then sentenced him to two years hard labour in Long Bay. His many supporters were outraged and hurled insults at the judge, who was quick to clear the court.

  Many in the media hinted that the sentence had been politically influenced.

  By 2016 there were more than 2000 gas wells in the Fisher Valley, with more being drilled every day. Paisley and the other townships had doubled in size and thousands of workers, enticed by the big money, flocked from all over Australia to join the gas companies. Those lucky enough to own properties in the towns saw prices explode, while their neighbours on the land suffered huge decreases in the value of their properties. Gas wells, gravel tracks and pipeline easements littered the grazing and farming properties, reducing the arable land available for primary production. Yields on milk production decreased, cattle breeding fell away, while there was an increase in stillborn and deformed calves, and thousands of hectares of grapes were trashed when the fruit, for some unknown reason, became bitter and unusable. The beauty of the valley
was gone forever, with man’s network of gas wells resembling a graffiti patchwork overlaying the once-beautiful masterpiece created by the world’s greatest Artist.

  Tourism was drying up and the three million visitors, who once visited the valley, had fallen to less than two million and numbers were continuing to decline. Wineries, restaurants and bed-and-breakfasts closed down and their owners, unable to find buyers, packed up their belongings and headed for greener pastures, often leaving more than thirty years’ goodwill behind them. Despite the fall in tourist numbers, the predominantly two-lane tracks and roads were clogged - with trucks and drill rig gangs.

  Courtesy of some very large donations by CEGL, Paisley Memorial Hospital had trebled in size, which was just as well, as the Valley’s incidence of dermatological diseases and lung, liver and kidney cancer exceeded thirty times the national norm. The water in the aquifers had been severely depleted, and methane, formerly contained by the pressure of the water, escaped to the surface. Many of the farmers, graziers and vineyard owners who remained had installed water tanks and were buying tanker water rather than run the risk of suffering methane or chemical poisoning.

  With the decline in farm yields, prices for grains, fruit, vegetables and meat exploded and many in the cities ignorantly accused their country cousins and the supermarkets of ripping them off. The ranks of Jack Thomas’s Fisher Valley Protective Alliance swelled to over 20,000, as the more astute consumers in the big cities twigged to what was going on and rushed to join the firebrand’s organisation.

  Norris Scott-Tempy was a seriously wealthy man and was described in the influential Australian Financial Review as one of Australia’s new breed of gas barons.

  Steve and Sandi had married and had a son and daughter and, while Steve had wanted to stay in the valley, Sandi had insisted that the environment was far too dangerous to bring children up in, so they had shifted to the ‘safer’, smog-ridden Sydney, where Steve became a star reporter with the National Advocate.

  Teachers from Paisley Primary School took a group of students to the koala-inhabited forest in the south of the valley, only to find that the koalas had completely vanished. There was no sign of where they had gone but the good folk of the valley had no doubts about what had driven them away.

  Almost unnoticed, a large law firm from Melbourne, Stayner & Garside, which was famous for bringing class actions against large corporations, moved into Paisley and opened a small office. A few months later, its counterpart from Sydney also discreetly set up shop in the town.

  Charles Paxton never got over the loss of little Charlie and, while he and Faye remained under the same roof, they might as well have been divorced. Her life revolved around God and the church while he withdrew from his friends and society, but was seen at all hours patrolling his properties, double-barrelled shot gun under his arm. Drilling rigs went up all over the valley, but CEGL’s employees, in fear of their lives, point-blank refused to enter what they called, ‘That madman’s properties.’ One morning, while showering, Charles felt an intense pain in his chest and knew exactly what it was. Faye was at the church and he could have tried to crawl to the phone, but he didn’t. Lying hunched over on the floor in agony, with the water beating down upon him, he wasn’t scared - he was happy - he would soon be with little Charlie. The last sound he ever heard was old Cosmos scraping and crying to get in at the front door.

  In 2019 two young boys were fishing in a small stream, a tributary of the Blaxland River, which trickled through a property on which wheat and maize were grown. They noticed a dead kookaburra at the stream’s edge and, a little further on, a magpie, but had paid little heed to the bodies. After three hours, neither had had a nibble and they were packing up their fishing gear, when a fully-grown wild boar tentatively worked its way down to the water’s edge only fifty metres from them. They knelt down, barely breathing, watching it looking around, before it started to drink. After it had drunk its fill, it backed away. It appeared to stumble and then, as it tried to run, its legs went from under it and it fell to the ground, struggling to get up again. In the few seconds it took the boys to get to the edge of the stream, the boar was dead.

  Fortunately, the tributary was short and environment authorities were quick to shut off access and to warn farmers along its boundaries not to drink or let their livestock drink the water from it. They soon discovered they could set the stream on fire - somehow deadly methane gas was seeping into it. Two weeks later, they tracked the cause to a gas well four hundred metres away, which had been encased by cement that turned out to be faulty. Millions of cubic feet of methane had bubbled into the stream. The boys and their parents were sworn to secrecy by the environment authorities, who did everything they could to hush up news of the seep, knowing that it would provoke panic and community outrage. There were seven properties abutting the stream and Donny Drayton was told to buy them for CEGL, no matter what price he had to pay.

  The legal firms acting for the parents of some of the children who had come down with cancer, and the landowners who had been shafted by the gas companies, found that getting a judgment was nearly impossible and that, every time they got close to mounting a major class action, it fell over. CEGL, through its lawyers, Braithwaite Ogilvie and Llewellyn, proved adroit at buying off the strongest members of the class actions, promising others they would settle if they dropped out of the legal action and threatening the rest.

  Two young lawyers, who had been particularly aggressive in persuading parents to join a class action, were having a quiet drink in the Paisley Hotel one night. When they went out to the car park, without any provocation, they were set upon and given a terrible hiding and told they weren’t welcome in Paisley. The legal firms trying to bring some justice, quickly learnt that big gas did not fight fair.

  In 2021 the Fisher Valley experienced a one-in-a-thousand-year flood. It swept away houses, barns and fences, and thousands of animals perished. Forty-seven people died and the storm wreaked billions of dollars of damage. The huge wastewater pits, some as large as five hundred acres, which had been designed to cope with more common floods, failed to contain the toxic wastewater that they were holding. Such was the magnitude of the tragedy, that the overflowing toxic wastewater hardly rated a mention in the media, but waterways became polluted and tens of thousands of lush acres of farming land would never again produce crops.

  By 2025, the first of the low-pressure gas wells had outlived their economic lives and the gas companies moved back onto properties in a futile attempt to meet their environmental undertaking to return the land to the condition it was in before the wells were drilled. How could they replace the vegetation they had removed twenty years earlier? Worse, the native animals had long since died or had found new habitats. Most of the wells were easily plugged with concrete, but there were stubborn ones that refused to be blocked and the ground around them moved in waves, as the methane fought to find a way to the surface. In some instances, the methane worked its way under water bores and streams, before eventually bubbling into the atmosphere. These ‘rogue’ wells were nearly impossible to plug and big gas’s solution was to attempt to bribe the landowners of the properties on which they were sunk with confidential offers to assume the company’s liability to restore and reinstate.

  In 2030 a small herd of twenty cattle were found dead by a water bore and, when it was analysed, it was found to contain deadly amounts of toluene and benzene. Nearly one hundred kilometres away, a herd of goats suffered the same fate and alarm bells rang in the farming community of the Fisher Valley. Not even the most experienced hydrologists had been able to determine whether the aquifers were linked, but when identical poisons were found in adjoining aquifers, fears about pollution of the Great Artesian Basin and the mighty Murray River swept through the community. The once-great food bowls on the east coast had already been severely depleted and, while environment authorities said that the traces of contaminants found in the Great Artesian Basin were within acceptable levels, no-one believed t
hat this would remain the case. The first of the poisons that had been pumped into the ground thirty years earlier were starting to seep through the earth and sub-structures and into the precious underground water.

  The Health Department was quick to stop the slaughter and sale of meat from large tracts of the valley and the already-exorbitant prices of meat soared, but not for long. Consumers, frightened by what they were reading and watching on their televisions, stopped eating meat and farmers from all over Australia suffered; many went to the wall.

  Spencer Harbrow had retired as a billionaire many years earlier, but CEGL had gone from strength to strength, taking over many of its smaller competitors, to achieve an undisputed position of market leadership. The share register remained dominated by overseas institutions, which received a stream of huge dividends from the destruction of Australia’s farmlands and the sale of the gas extracted from under them to China and India. Ironically, the standard of living in those countries had taken a quantum leap forward, almost in inverse proportion to those living in rural Australia.

  In 2035 Steve and Sandi Forrest returned to Paisley to celebrate the full and long life of his father, Len. The old Paisley cemetery had been extended to allow for more plots but otherwise had not changed. After the burial was over, Steve stopped for a few seconds in front of the tombstone of Charlie Paxton and contemplated that bleak day over twenty years earlier and the damage that big gas had wreaked on his valley. He was now one of Australia’s pre-eminent journalists, but he had always known that he would one day, after his children attained adulthood, return to Paisley as the owner of the Chronicle. With his father’s passing, that time had arrived.

  Dean Prezky was sixty-two and had never stopped fighting the gas companies and, while not expecting to win, he ran for the Federal Senate as an independent; against all the odds he won. His slogan, Big Gas is a Dirty Fracking Business captured the public’s imagination and the city dwellers, the savvy sons and daughters of parents who’d gone to sleep at the wheel thirty years earlier, overwhelmingly cast their votes for him.